


No Hell Below Us

by Sylvia_Locust



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, Slavery, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 13:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylvia_Locust/pseuds/Sylvia_Locust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick Roman, president and CEO of Leviathan, Inc., is the most powerful and feared man in the country. His vision of a Corporate-ruled society that runs on the backs of "charges," indentured debtors and petty criminals, is becoming fully realized. Sam and Dean have spent their lives throwing wrenches into the Corporate system when they can, and helping men and women escape corrupt officials to lead free lives across the border. When they finally see an opportunity to bring Roman down for good, they gamble with their own lives to bring an end to Dick's reign.</p><p>Or, a non-supernatural retelling of season 7.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Hell Below Us

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first (and last?) big bang, and I'm very grateful to daniomalley22 for being an awesome beta and cheerleader, and to liliaeth for her gorgeous artwork, and to both of them for putting up with my complete and total inability to finish this fic

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/hellbetweenus2-resize_zpse0ad5b9a.png.html)

 

**Prologue**

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/quote1_zpsfcc15ac7.png.html) _The explosion sends Sam flying backwards through the air, crashing into a door at the end of the hallway. Something in his shoulder gives with a sick crunch, and when he opens his eyes he sees the bones of his left wrist have punctured through his skin._

_He and Dean always laugh at the obligatory bomb sequence in action movies, mostly because they all look like they were shot and framed exactly the same, camera staring down the hero as the force of the blast hurtles the actor towards the audience._

_It's not so funny now._

_He must have been close to the source, can still feel that strange expansion of air that took his breath away and made his eyes water, his hair stand on end._

_"Fuck," he mutters as he pushes up with his good arm and staggers to his feet, tries to make his way through the rubble back to the lobby, back to the party. It was surely the point of origin, though he's not sure what happened. None of their plots about this night involved explosives, that was something they only resorted to when there was no chance of hurting innocents._

_But someone had seen fit to try to bring down a 32-story building packed with people; someone had detonated a bomb in the middle of Roman's annual Shareholders Gala._

_Where Dean was._

_"Fuck," he says again, and then “Dean!” he bellows. His voice is muffled, hearing almost completely blown, the world muted and chaotic, screams that sound like whispers, exploding bricks that pop like snappers thrown down on hot summer pavement. Farther away, Sam feels more explosions in his bones that he can't even hear. Walls crash around him as he staggers down the hallway, calling for his brother, cursing Dean’s name._

_The hallway is filling up with revelers in sparkly gowns and tuxes, fleeing the source. Sam has to fight his way past them back to the main lobby._

_As he gets closer to the origin of the blast, the air fills with thick smoke, with pulverized concrete and drywall. It's hard to see, harder to breathe, but he has to get to Dean, get to where Dean was supposed to be._

_He walks straight into a panicked Kevin._

_"What are you doing?" Kevin shouts in Sam's face, though he sounds like he's calling from a quarter mile away. Kevin tries to turn Sam around, steer him towards the exits, but Sam shrugs him off and continues trying to fight his way to Roman._

_To Dean._

_“Where’s my brother?” Sam yells over the ringing in his ears, but Kevin is screaming at him that they have to get out now, there might be more explosives, enough to bring the building down. Sam shrugs him away easily. He shoves his way through the crowded hallway and into the rubble-strewn lobby, shouting his brother’s name, but he doesn’t see Dean anywhere._

_All he finds is a boot._

_A worn, size 10 workboot with a foot still nestled inside._

_Sam turns away and heaves, but he hasn’t eaten in days and all he manages to do is choke on bile before he gets hold of himself again._

_Nobody was supposed to die today. Not even Dick-fucking-Roman, who deserved to die for ushering in this state of slave labor with his glib lies and catchy sound bites._

_Who deserved to die for killing Bobby._

_This was not how the plan was supposed to go down. Nobody was supposed to die today._

__

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/quote5_zps95596762.png.html)

Sam was 10 the first and only time he ever sees his father raise a hand to Dean. 

They were walking down a crowded street in Phoenix when Dean whistled at a pretty girl a little bit older than him who was walking in the other direction. She’d paid them no attention, eyes fixed straight ahead, though the man with her winked at Dean, a look that curdled the chocolate milk in Sam’s stomach. Sam’s eyes were transfixed on the vivid purple collar around the girl's neck; when he looked forward again his father was cuffing Dean’s ear and Dean’s face was burning.

That night his dad gave Sam a handful of quarters and sent him to the arcade in the main lobby so he and Dean could “have a talk,” but Sam doubled back and sat down outside their room, trying to listen through the flimsy door. He could just make out the comforting rumble of his dad's voice, and he leaned back against the door, listening with his head tilted. 

"I think you're old enough to know some things, Dean," his dad began, and at first Sam thought it was going to be some embarrassing sex talk. He was already thinking up ways to tease Dean about this later, but then the tone of the conversation shifted. It wasn’t one of those ‘your changing body’ talks; they were talking about the charge system.

It sounded like a history lesson, and Sam had to resist the urge to jump to his feet and burst into the room, demanding he be allowed to listen. Sam used to enjoy history class, but most of the schools he attended these days had dropped the subject. Especially the shiny new schools with computers at every desk and names like First Bank P.S. 103 or RRE Central. Schools where addition was taught with M&M's®, and the cafeteria was run by Biggersons, and there was no more music or art or library time.

Sam missed library time.

Sam had never really noticed, not until he eavesdropped on his father's conversation with Dean, that it was the Corporate-run schools that no longer bothered with history or social studies. Unless it was the very recent history—every Corporate school had a unit on the great Manufacturing Exodus, and how the "New Corporate Structure stopped Criminals and the Criminal-Debtors from crippling this once-great blah blah blah."

Sam had been to 20 different schools by the time he was in 5th grade, and the Manufacturing Exodus was always described in the exact same words.

When Sam's butt was numb from sitting on the concrete for more than an hour, he finally stood and knocked on the door. It was a chastened Dean who let him in, and Sam hated seeing that look on his brother’s face, the look that he got when he felt like he'd let John down. He knew Dean hadn't meant any harm to the girl on the street. Sam rummaged around in his duffle until he came up with a half-melted candy bar he'd been saving for a couple of weeks, and he offered it to Dean with a lopsided grin.

"Loser," Dean had said, but he took the chocolate and let Sam talk him into a game of Rummy with their battered deck of cards until dad got back with a pizza. Usually any day that Dean would play with him got moved to the Good Day column in Sam's head, but the encounter on the street, and the somber discussion that followed, made it a day Sam didn't really like to remember, and a day he couldn't forget.

 

 

John taught his boys that killing was the absolute last resort. "Most of the stuff we do, the raids and blowing up the empty slave centers, that can be spun lots of ways. Some folks will call us terrorists, but some will see what we're doing for what it is."

"Yes sir," Dean said.

"But once you start dealing death, it's a lot harder to get people to see our side of things. People don't like it when just anybody starts deciding whose time it is."

"But, what about—" Sam said.

"Boys, I'm not telling you some people don't deserve to die. But once we make that decision for others, we're not much different than Corporate. We're just not holding any cards."

"Yes sir," both boys said dutifully.

That didn't mean they didn't practice target shooting every week. John knew he was training his boys for a war, same as he'd been trained. He didn't like to think too much about the fact that he was training Sam and Dean to fight the same entity that he'd once sworn to protect with his life.

 

 

 

 

John knew he’d been drawing too much attention, tried to keep away from the boys in case everything went to hell, but of course the first time they met in months the net started to drop down around them.

He was pretty much out of cards to play when he set up a meeting with Lucifer’s second in charge, that craggy-faced fuck with the weird gold eyes.

“We don’t have much on Sam, yet” Golden-eyes had said. “But your older boy? He’ll be hanging on national TV a week from Sunday.”

John pulled out his Colt and aimed dead between the eyes.

“Why, John, I’m surprised. Surely you know I didn’t come here alone.”

“I can make a deal,” John said. “You bring me in now and let the boys go. I won’t fight you.” 

“Or I could bring you all in at once, wouldn’t that be more fun? You can have some quality family time before I gut you.”

“The boys don’t know anything about operations, not the stuff I do.”

“And, what, I’m supposed to believe you’ll talk?”

“It’s worth a shot. You’ve got a lot of interrogation techniques in your arsenal.”

“That I do, John.” His golden eyes glittered with cruel amusement.

It was big news for Corporate when John Winchester turned himself in, with politicians promising that many more arrests would be imminent since they’d snagged a key member of the resistance.

All they had to do was get him to talk.

The hunting community and other rebels held their collective breath, but John never broke, never turned another soul in. When he was finally executed after months of torture, Sam and Dean sought refuge at Bobby Singer’s salvage yard.

Sam missed his father terribly, but in the wake of John’s death Sam felt like he’d lost his brother too. Grief and anger overtook Dean to the point where Sam barely recognized him sometimes. They both knew that without John’s interference Dean would have hung months ago, and Dean could not make peace with that knowledge.

But it got better, slowly, and they soldiered on.

It was the only thing they knew how to do.

For years after their father’s death they kept up his fight, throwing wrenches in the Corporate works and helping people evade the Corporate traps that led inexorably to indentured servitude. It was never enough, but they probably would have kept chiseling away where they could indefinitely if Dick Roman hadn’t decided to turn the tables and come after them. Cornered, Sam and Dean decided if they were going down, they were going to take a chunk of Roman’s empire with them.

They just needed a plan. 

 

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/quote42_zps2d31adf2.png.html)

 

Jody Mills stops by the store after her shift to pick up a bottle of wine and something to microwave, trying to make quick work of it. She hates shopping, hates buying sad frozen dinners when she used to have sit-down meals with her husband and son. Most of the time she has a handle on her loneliness but sometimes the longing to sweep her little boy up into her arms and hear him laugh again is overwhelming, and these feelings always seem a little more raw, a little closer to the surface, when she shops for her dinner.

All of this flashes through her mind in a blink, as it does every goddamned time she enters the Corporate Grocery Store, so she almost mistakes the stab in her gut for sorrow.

Then she feels it again, a sharp pain so unlike the dull ache of grief that she curses, turns to try to make it back to her car before someone calls an ambulance.

“Sheriff Mills, do you need help?” asks a voice next to her and she shakes her head grimly. She has to get home, figure out who’s safe to call from there. _C’mon, Jody, you can drive the five miles home_ , she tells herself, just before collapsing halfway across the parking lot. She lies on the dirty pavement, clenching her stomach and cursing her shitty goddamned luck.

Just before the ambulance pulls up, she finally succeeds in thumbing through her phone to call Singer. She’s heard whispers this is the kind of thing he can help out with and she’s turned a blind eye enough times to think he might be willing to help. She’ll be damned if a burst appendix is going to cost her freedom.

 

 

Bobby hangs up the phone and eyes Sam warily. “I gotta run up to the hospital, Sam. Are you okay here by yourself?”

“Yeah, sure, Bobby,” Sam says, though his eyes keep shifting to some spot just past Bobby’s left shoulder. 

Bobby’s seen some pretty fucked-up cases of PTSD in his day, but Sam’s might just take the cake. Keeps acting like his interrogators are still in the room with him, and it’s creepy as fuck. Still, it can’t be fixed right now, and he doesn’t need one of his Official allies disappearing into the work camps or the factories because she got sick at the wrong time.

“Yeah, all right,” Bobby says, removing his cap and running a hand through his hair, still uneasy about leaving Sam alone. “You cover the phones, okay?” Bobby hands over one of his encrypted journals. “And see if you can find somebody willing to make house calls. I don’t exactly need the Sheriff of Sioux Falls coding on my front lawn.”

“Yeah, okay,” Sam says, picking up the book and rifling through it. “I’ll be here.”

 

 

Jody wakes up several hours later, minus one appendix, with an IV full of morphine and enough antibiotics to treat a whorehouse. She’s laying on some kind of makeshift cot and based on the room's décor—a poster showing the feline digestive system—she’s pretty sure she just got operated on by a veterinarian.

The door opens then and Jody smiles, the kind of smile she hasn't flashed since she sucked up a bong full of smoke at a party her senior year of high school.

“Bobby Singer, my hero,” she says. 

He winces. “Pretty sure that’s the roofies talking.” 

She glances around as though looking for something, someone, and Bobby takes her meaning. 

“The doc’s outside," Bobby explains. "He’s a little skittish about doing unauthorized surgery on an Official, you know.”

She closes her eyes. 

“He saved my life,” she says as her head starts to float away again like a barely tethered balloon. She reaches out her hand, smiling as Bobby takes it. 

“My son was sick,” she says, and even in her drug-induced haze there’s a part of her that’s shocked. She never talks about Owen, not ever.

“He was sick for a long time and we did everything we could, you know, everything. But it didn't matter. He still died.” 

Bobby squeezes her hand and remains silent, remembering against his will how disease had taken his own wife, how the unpaid hospital bills piling up had made him a target, led to his life as an outlaw.

“We did everything we could, y'know? Everything. And when he...when he was gone we were left with all these bills. All these fucking goddamn hospital bills and, somehow, I’m supposed to care about them." Jody laughs, an unhappy barking sound that makes Bobby feel even worse. "I'm supposed to care about bills while my baby is dead?"

Bobby closes his eyes and sighs heavily.

"And then my husband died," Jody continues, and Bobby feels like an ass, the worst ass, because he knows Sheriff Mills would never confess to all this if she weren't convinced she was about to die and whacked out on horse tranquilizers. 

“I’ve always paid my debts, y’know?” she mumbles as she starts to slip under again. “Don’t wanna end up in one of the factories surrounded by nets.”

"I won't let that happen, Sheriff Mills," he says, and she giggles, points an unsteady finger at him.

"We're both criminals," she tells him, watching her finger trace sparks through the air. “I think you can call me Jody.”

“Yeah. Well. You get some rest, Jody. I’ll be back to check on you soon.”

When he returns home Sam is nowhere to be found. Bobby calls for him a couple of times and then sighs. _Poor crazy kid_ , he thinks. _Needs more help than Dean or I have to spare._

He heads to the kitchen to grab a beer and has just enough time to register the explosive wired to the fridge door, just enough time to be grateful that the boys are out.

His life doesn’t exactly flash before his eyes, but he does remember…

_Bobby kept a stash of movies on video cassette and an old fashioned VCR to play them in._

_"Never saw the need to upgrade," he'd say with a grunt if asked. "Nothing worth watching anymore anyway."_

_Dean and Sam agreed, since the studios are all owned by Morningstar or Crowley and there's no money for independent films anymore, and nobody foolish enough to make them. These days it's lots of movies about the bad old days and how great things are now._

_Dean still goes to the theatre once in a while if there's an actress he likes onscreen, but he tells Sam he's doing research on the enemy._

_"Right," Sam snorts._

_But Bobby still had some kick ass films from before, martial arts and good old fashioned vigilante justice flicks and on the rare occasions when Sam and Dean aren't out there in the trenches, they'll hole up for a few days and eat junk food and drink beer and fight over which movie to watch next._

_It's hardly an endless supply, Bobby thought with a fond smile. They've seen each film at least 30 times._

_These days just owning movies and books from before could get you jailed but a few ratty videos are the least of his problems, as far as the Officials are concerned._

_It's a good day, good as an old outlaw with creaky joints can hope for, with the boys safe and close. Soon enough they'll be out on the road again, fighting the good fight, but today's a good day._

_Those two never did listen for shit_ , Bobby thinks just before the world turns white.

 

 

 

 

Krissy Chambers is hiding in the closet of her dad’s office, a stolen phone in her trembling hands.

This was not supposed to happen. Her dad was a hero.

She dials 6 numbers and presses End. Eight numbers and then End. Finally she dials the whole string. Her dad wouldn't steer her wrong, wouldn't deliver her to the bad guys.

"Hello?"

He's younger than she imagined, but she tries anyway.

"Is Bobby Singer there?"

There's a long pause and then, "Uh, no. He's, uh, I’m a friend of his."

"My dad asked me to call Bobby Singer specifically."

The guy stammers something out but she’s already hanging up.

She is so screwed. 

When her phone rings again and Bobby's number flashes on the screen, she jams it down the garbage disposal. Not like she'll be using it anymore.

The cop that had been sent to pick her up asks her if she was aware her father had been branded a terrorist by the Corporate-State.

"Uh, what?" she asks, but the lie is obvious to her ears and his.

"Look kid," the cop says, eyes sweeping the room nervously. "Between me and you, they're gonna make an example of you. Lee Chambers did a lot to embarrass the higher-ups, cost them a lot of money with sabotage and stuff. They're gonna take it out on your ass."

He doesn't add the 'literally,' but she hears it. He has the good grace to blush. Krissy glares at him and crosses her arms.

The cop runs a hand through his unkempt black hair, sighs heavily. "I got a daughter your age, okay? So I'm gonna go back to the precinct and say you weren't here. So when we come back? Don't be here."

She's in the park across the street, watching, when an ancient Buick pulls up in front of her building. A guy roughly the size of a house steps out, looks at the number on the apartment building, and heads inside.

He doesn't look like he was sent by Corporate, though she supposes they could be getting a little bit trickier, trying to cover up their fancy suits in everyday clothes. But this guy doesn't look like that, looks like her dad, like the other hunters she's come across who her dad always introduces as old friends, like she doesn’t know what they really do. 

But he definitely isn’t Bobby Singer, so she waits and she watches. Maybe he can help, maybe he'll turn her in. Maybe he'll keep her for himself. She can't tell yet, doesn't plan on taking any chances.

 

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/quote7_zpsf6566c9e.png.html)

 

 

Kevin is flushed with excitement, music still thrumming from his fingertips to his toes like a mild electrical current. He bows politely, still cognizant that he's not really who the applauding crowd came to see, but still.

He had won the Best Young Musician Award for his region, and his prize was performing a solo at Symphony Center. The only thing that would make this moment any better was if that assy violinist Trent from Regionals could see him now.

He grins at his mom and Channing, clapping wildly in the eighth row, takes a final bow, and heads back stage. 

What a night. He would feel like pumping his fist in the air, but that would probably be undignified in his rented tux.

The stagehand nods at him in acknowledgement as he hurries around backstage switching out instruments. 

This is the best night of his life.

 

 

This is the worst night of Kevin’s life. Sure, he’s only sixteen, but nothing else even comes close. While he was still backstage mentally high-fiving himself, a small dark-haired woman named Susan came to see him, telling him that her boss had a proposition for him.

“He was very taken with your playing,” Susan says. “He’d like to keep you on retainer.”

Her lack of facial expression gives Kevin the creeps. She looks like she’s wearing a mask with a permanent smirk.

“Um, that’s nice but I’m still in school, you know, and I have SATs in a couple of weeks…”

“He doesn’t take no for an answer.”

“Right. Well, I’ll be going now.” He tries to push past the crazy lady and walks right into Dick Roman.

“Mr. Roman?” he squeaks, amazed to find himself in front of the most powerful man in the country.

“Kevin Tran,” Dick says. “Nice job out there. You’ve got spark. I like spark.”

“Thanks?”

He grips Kevin by the shoulder and steers him through the backstage hallways until they find an unoccupied practice room. There he proceeds to make it very clear how easy it would be to have Mrs. Tran charged with a crime and put away.

“My mom hasn’t done anything wrong!” Kevin protests.

“Not that you know of. But I can have her arrested for just about, oh, any little thing. My team is very creative that way when we put our minds to it, right Susan?” 

“You can’t do that!”

“Kevin, do you want your mother to spend the rest of her life working in a coal mine?”

“My mother’s a tax attorney,” Kevin says, feeling numb. Roman just laughs.

When Susan comes to his house the next morning with a contract to become a voluntary charge for the next 5 years or until Roman no longer wants a teenaged cellist underfoot, he signs. And initials. And initials. And signs.

He climbs into the back of the limo Susan had arrived in, wanting to get away before he has to explain to his mom what he’s done. She’ll be furious, he knows, so furious that she’ll try to take on Roman and lose.

Better if she thinks he went crazy from some kind of overachiever burnout and ran away from home. He can send her postcards telling her he’s working in a Taco Hut and has decided to devote his life to carving driftwood. 

She will no doubt want him to be a world-class driftwood carver, if that's what he wants. Kevin’s mom is great like that.

 

 

 

 

“So, who’s gonna be the slave?” Frank asks, as he continues to study the surveillance footage on his various screens and monitors.

“The what?” Sam and Dean say at once.

“The slave, you boneheads. Are you deaf as well as dumb?”

Sam looks at Dean. Dean looks at Sam.

“We were thinking that maybe wouldn't be necessary,” Sam says carefully.

“Ha! That’s what you get for thinking.”

Sam sighs, thinking back to a simpler time, only a few short months ago, when Bobby was the crankiest old fart he knew. But Bobby is gone, everyone’s gone, and they’re stuck with Frank Devereux, one of Bobby’s crazier contacts, who had very reluctantly agreed to help them. _Just don’t go crying my name when they catch you_ , Frank had grumbled. _I’ll be on a beach in Tahiti._

“Dammit, Frank, just get us as close to Roman as you can," Dean snaps, bringing Sam back to the present. "We can take care of the rest.”

Frank finally tears himself away from his footage. “The closer you get to Roman, the fewer guys like you and me you’ll see. He’s surrounded by two types of people—the people who run everything, and their slaves. There’s no middle class in that part of the country anymore, lollipop."

There's an extended silence as they think about Frank's words.

“Me,” both brothers say at the same time. 

“Fall on your swords much, boys?” Frank asks, annoyed.

He shoos them out so he can get to work forging their documents, visibly irritated each time one of the Winchesters sneaks back into his office to explain exactly why his brother should not be allowed to enter Roman’s stronghold with a collar around his neck. Frank ignores them both, head bent to his task, and emerges hours later with papers for one Sam Smith, indentured factory worker being transported to the RRE Foundry plant in Chicago, in the custody of one Dean Jones, Currier of Charges (COC).

Dean is apoplectic. His left eye is twitching spasmodically and when he shouts at Frank, spit actually flies from his mouth. Sam thinks it would be funny if the situation weren’t so grave.

Well. It's still a _little_ funny.

"This is the best way to get close Dean," Sam tries to rationalize with Dean through his anger. "This will get us near Roman without attracting too much attention, and worse comes to worse, I have to make shell casings for a couple of weeks till you bust me out..."

Dean's face turns white at the mere mention of their plan going sideways, and Sam thinks Dean might be ready to deck him until Frank intercedes. with his usual deft conversational skills.

"Look here, pretty boy," Frank growls, and Dean bristles at the hated phrase. "You do not want to be in greater Chicago with a collar around your neck. At least Jumbo here looks like a damned stevedore. You end up wearing a purple collar? You ain’t never getting it off.”

Dean closes his eyes and clenches his fists, before turning and punching the wall so hard Sam thinks he might have broken a finger. He stalks from the room, slamming the front door so it rattles on its hinges.

"Well, that went well," Frank says as he turns back to his monitors. 

Sam turns to go after his brother.

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/quote8_zpse10e2539.png.html)

 

 

"I hate this plan," Dean says for the 20th time as they head east towards Chicago.

"It was your plan."

Dean taps his thumbs on the steering wheel and doesn’t answer. 

Roman Enterprises, headquartered in a sprawling city-block of buildings in Chicago, employed thousands of people, and 'employed' hundreds of thousands of charges. It was well-planned, well-guarded, and might as well have been an impenetrable fortress. 

"It's practically impenetrable," Dean says as they drove through the cloudy, moonless night.

"Wait for it," Sam mutters as he watched the fields roll by.

"Well. I mean, nothing's impenetrable," Dean says. " _I_ can penetrate anything."

Sam snorts, but Dean thinks he maybe catches a wisp of a smile on Sam’s pursed lips. He hopes so. Sam hasn't done a whole lot of smiling since Cas got him out of the re-ed camp.

"Look," Dean says. "Frank’s IDs will get us close. From there, our natural Winchester charm will get us through the front door."

"Would that be the same Winchester charm that got us run out of Lake Manitoc?” Sam asks. “Arrested in Baltimore? Arrested in Little Rock? Arrested in Monument?"

"Little Rock totally doesn’t count. We were _trying_ to get arrested there."

"Yes, and didn't that work out well."

"We busted Deacon out," Dean snaps. "Just because everything didn't go exactly like it was supposed to." 

Several miles tick by before Sam asks, "Are you trying to talk me into this plan? Or out of it?"

Dean can’t say, doesn’t even know. Feels like every roll he throws these days comes up snake eyes.

They don't talk about it, but they both feel like they're on their final mission. Even if they manage to get the help they need to bring down Roman’s empire, they’ll never make it out alive.

Sam knows Dean will do his best to keep Sam safe while he takes all the risks and suffers the consequences, but Sam doesn’t want Dean to take any more bullets for him. He’s lost everything _but_ Dean. If cutting off the head of the Corporate State works like Sam hopes it will, it would be worth dying for.

 

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/quote9_zps69c7f640.png.html)

 

They stop at a Biggersons just south of Champagne. They usually stick to restaurants they know to be ‘friendly’—small, independent diners that are barely hanging on—but Dean is starving and they don’t have a lot of contacts in this part of the country.

They slide into a booth like they'd done at least once a day for most of their lives, and immediately the manager comes over to tell them Sam has to leave. 

"Are you kidding me?" Dean asks. "It's freaking cold outside."

"I'm very sorry sir, but those are the rules. Charges are not allowed to eat with other customers, by Corporate law."

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because I don’t have any money,” Sam says quietly, studying his knuckles. “Everything I ‘earn’ is supposed to go back to the Corporation.”

“But I’m buying his lunch!” Dean said, fighting to keep his voice level.

“I’m sorry sir,” the manager says again, starting to lose patience. “Your charge needs to turn his travel vouchers in at the Corporate pantry if he wishes to eat in this town.” 

“But...” Dean said, casting about the diner. “There's a slave right there!”

“Last time I checked, slavery was still illegal,” the manager snaps. "That young gentleman is a personal charge, and they abide by a different set of rules.”

Dean takes a second look at the slave—Mr. Manager might not want to call a spade a spade, but Dean sure as fuck will—and realizes the 'young gentleman' is about 16 years old.

His taste for hot fries and a burger disintegrates. 

“It's okay Dean—Mr. Jones,” Sam says. “I’ll wait in the car.”

Dean wants to punch the window, the manager, the dirty old man sitting next to the fucking _child_ in the purple collar, and all the people who just keep averting their eyes. He has to settle for slamming the door as he follows his brother out into the dark.

As they get closer to Chicago the tension winds around them like a poisonous fog. Something Sam can almost taste at the back of his tongue, like ash, like sulfur.

"Maybe we should just—" Dean tries one last time.

"Dean. C'mon. We need to get to that hacker before Dic k knows every last detail about us. Who knows, maybe she can even help. I bet she could finish tweaking the program Frank started."

"Right, some IT nerd on Dick's payroll is going to want to help a couple of rebels."

Sam shrugs. "Never know. Everybody who does what we do starts somewhere."

"You don't really believe that."

Sam doesn't, not really, but if there's one thing he and Dean are good at, it's lying to each other. Every so often it even makes them feel better instead of worse.

"Why not?" Sam asks. "Anyway, even if she's ready to turn us in we can stash her somewhere safe and get back the hard drive."

Dean grinds his teeth together with every word, and Sam wonders not for the first time how come he's the one who’s been stuck with crippling migraines most of his life.

They pass the next 50 miles in silence before Dean speaks again.

"Y'know, Dad said Chicago used to be one of the coolest places on earth," Dean says. 

Dean never brings up Dad without prodding or good reason, and Sam takes that as another cue that Dean is an eyebrow hair away from losing it.

"Must have been a long time ago," Sam says finally.

“When he was a marine,” Dean says. _When he still believed in dying for his country_ , he thinks.

The last time Dean was in the city he had a pretty much chronic case of the willies. Every billboard, every skyscraper, screens in almost every room in the city projected Dick's smiling mug as he gave his platitudes for the day, encouraging citizens and charges alike to keep up the good work.

"Freedom is hard earned, but isn't anything worth having hard to achieve?" Dick would smile benevolently upon the crowds below. This would usually be followed by an incredibly phony newscast about how terrible the conditions were in the areas of the country controlled by Lucifer and Crowley, and how their bad resource management had led to families faced with either eating their beloved pets or starving. Dean couldn’t figure out if the people passing him on the street believed all that bullshit or if they were just pretending.

They spend the next couple of weeks in Chicago hiding out in an abandoned loft and calling in favors from some of their few remaining contacts. Roman’s employee, a slight and skittish redhead named Charlie, seems willing if not exactly thrilled to help them out. Sam thinks she’s dealt with Corporate, if the shadow that crosses her face when they begin talking is any indication, though how she ended up working at RRE if that was the case is a mystery. But she’d taken one look at the software virus Frank had been working on and her eyes lit up, and she immediately started working to hammer out the last few kinks.

They have one more stop to make so Dean can meet up with a hunter they haven’t seen in a few years, and then they’re going to hole up until Charlie’s ready for them. If all goes according to plan, everything should be ready to go just in time for Roman’s Shareholder’s Gala.

They’re so damn close to achieving what Dad and Bobby and Jim and all the others had set out to do so many years ago, and Sam finds himself experiencing an emotion he hasn’t felt in years: hope.

So of course, that’s when everything goes to hell. 

 

 

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/quote10_zpsc1b75528.png.html)

 

Joyce Bicklebee enjoys going in for the kill. A few carefully chosen words, a winning smile, and she could almost always get them to sign on the dotted line.

_This refinance will help you build equity faster, lower your monthly payments, help you manage your credit debts. Help you keep the Corporate drones off your back, help you get your head above water again, you don’t want to spend the rest of your days in a foundry with a collar around your neck, right?_

They bought it almost every single time, and then Joyce could sit back and wait for the hidden balloon payment to take effect, wait for the Corporate Containment vans to roar up and haul her clients off to the foundries or the lumber mills and she’d sit back and wait for her kickback check to clear.

Joyce Bicklebee had been a good realtor once, but she is even better at bankrupting the ignorant and padding the Corporate coffers with forced labor.

Joyce loves her job. 

She’s less fond of the rookie agent she’s been stuck with for the past few months. George has been slow to adapt to the remuneration offered by Richard Roman Enterprises in return for the placement of healthy new corporate-owned charges.

If George doesn’t get with the program soon she’s going to have do a little digging into his own financial situation. She does _not_ need another whistleblower scare; those are never good for business.

"So, Mr. Marshall, what do you think about the loan?" she asks as the man steps back into his office.

"Well, Ma'am, I've done a little checking up and it seems to me that lots of folks who do business with you end up losing their shirts. I'd kind of prefer to keep my money where it is if it's all the same to you." Marshall gives her a cold look that lets her know he’s seen through her scam.

Joyce sees red, sees her fat commission for acquiring another business for RRE disappear, but she smiles anyway as she shows Mr. Marshall to the door.

"Can't win 'em all," George says philosophically.

She’s dying to smack the smug smile off his face. "Shut up, George."

She refrains from firing him on the spot by the thinnest margin and orders him to go across town to get her a coffee. She's considering it his last chance, so when he calls her an hour later she's prepared to fire, kill, and roast him if she ever has to look at his face again.

“What’d you do this time, George? And where’s my darned coffee?”

“Never mind the coffee,” George says impatiently. "I’m staring right at Sam Winchester."

“What? Where?”

Across town, George watches as the overgrown outlaw slumps further in the passenger seat of an old pickup sipping an extra-large coffee with shaking hands. He looks wrung out and exhausted.

George rattles off the details, content to let Joyce once again take the credit for his work. Roman would pay them both handsomely for a chance to get his hands on the Winchesters, and George could take care of Joyce in his own good time. If there was one thing she'd taught him, it was how to ruin a person's credit score with one or two well-placed phone calls and the right amount of cash.

 

 

Sam is stuck waiting in the truck, trying not to attract too much attention, while Dean meets with Annie at a near-by coffee shop. Even with the wind blowing off of the lake the air is stifling, but Sam's not too keen on getting out, not even to stretch his legs. There aren't that many blue collars walking the streets of Evanston; most live where they work. He feels safer in the truck, even as he recognizes something in him that needs fixing, something that Lucifer broke.

Dean strolls back to the truck an hour later and leans up against it as though he's studying the water. Shards of light bounce off of the waves like glass, hurting Sam’s head.

He’s so damned tired these days.

"What'd Annie say," Sam asks, lighting up as Dean passes him a cup of coffee through the window.

Dean shakes his head. "I think we've been stood up."

"Yeah, let's hope that's all it is."

"I'm getting a bad feeling about this whole thing." 

Sam's inclined to agree. “Think we should get going?”

“Yeah, I’m going to check the area one more time and then we’d better find a place to lay low," Dean says.

"Yeah, okay. Hey Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Try not to get killed."

Dean smiles. "Yeah, yeah."

Sam leans back against the head rest and lets his eyes slip closed.

Ten minutes later the Officials roll up.

 

 

Charlie Bradbury's been on the run for half her life and this, getting involved in this particular brand of crazy, is not the kind of thing that has helped her evade capture by Corporate officials after her parents were killed.

Like a grieving 12-year-old was supposed to care that her parents' life insurance had lapsed?

So yeah, Charlie is way past second thoughts when it comes to helping Sam and Dean with their harebrained schemes to take down Dick Roman. She's probably up to her 22nd thought and counting. 

What? She's spent years trying to fly below the Corporate radar. Except, well, for the part where she works for the Corporation.

And, yeah, maybe she's been a bit of an ostrich, but the things she's pulling from Frank Deveraux’s hard drive would have Roman strung up so fast—under the laws _he_ lobbied for—

Charlie’s stomach feels leaden and heavy in a way that probably has nothing to do with the bagel she had for breakfast.

Gluten-free her ass.

She stands up and stretches, feeling bones in her back pop alarmingly. She's barely left her desk in days, and the office is starting to wake up around her again. Her cubicle farm is in a cell dead zone, no doubt on purpose, so it's not till she's heading to the café for a hot tea to sooth her stomach that she sees a missed call from Dean.

Frak. 

Dean doesn't exactly call to chat.

"CB, baby, you're my one free call," Charlie hears after she's thumbed in her pass code. "So look, babe, I'm not going to be able to meet you for dinner tonight, but I left something kinda important in the car, if you could collect it I'll owe you one."

Double Frak.

Thankful that she grabbed all her stuff before she left for her 10 minute break—lessons learned from a life on the run—Charlie heads straight home to tune into the Corporate com link. She figured out how to hack into the secure channels when she was 14, and spent more than a year obsessively listening in to make sure nobody was looking very hard for her. The coded phone calls and messages were very hard to listen to, though, and she left it alone for many years, content to make a life for herself that would not end with a collar around her neck.

She keeps her head down and her code flawless, and she's the best at her job. By this point even if she were caught and charged with the financial debt her parents had left behind, she'd end up pretty much where she is now. She works with several white collars and even though they have to sleep in some kind of barracks in the basement of the RRE building, everyone knows it could be so much worse. Still, Charlie feels bad that some of her coworkers don't drink sticky foamy coffees from the stand in the cafeteria or nibble on muffins between meals. Even to drink the dreck from the coffee pots in the break room, the white collars have to use their tokens, and if they spend too many on coffee they can't afford actual food or toiletries. Charlie tries to smuggle in as many lattes as she can without calling attention to herself.

Everything was cruising along just fine until Richard Roman himself plucked her out of the IT crowd to give her a special assignment.

Just for Charlie.

Yay?

"This belonged to one Frank Devereaux," Roman had told her. "Thought he could bring down the whole company. He was wrong. Let's keep him wrong. It's encrypted, or whatever you crazy kids say these days. Break it open and bring it to me.”

"Yeah, I'm on it. And – and thank you."

"You're welcome. You have three days or you're fired."

Charlie blinked.

"Good talk," he said, and she was dismissed.

When she got home from work late that night she’d found Sam and Dean waiting for her with a counteroffer.

The news on the com is bad. Get-out-of-town-and-go-underground bad. Last night a two-bit realtor on Roman's payroll had spotted Sam Winchester sitting in a stolen Chevy pickup. The realtor had called it in, and an hour later Dean was arrested coming out of a cafe. Shortly after, Sam had been taken to the Corporate County building where he had been inventoried like any other piece of property. 

That's where Charlie's trail ran cold. Nobody was saying where the brothers were, what kind of shape they were in, or anything else that would be remotely helpful.

She stands in the middle of her small apartment, chewing on her lip, wondering how she ever got herself into this mess. She's half considering cutting her losses and running. She can be a new person by morning. Maybe Beverly Niven. Or Wendy Clarke.

She's just started stuffing some essentials into her messenger bag when there's a rap at the door.

"Aww, frak." She squeezes her eyes shut in frustration.

 

 

"Dean Winchester."

The voice that rouses Dean from a dozy, uneasy sleep is steady and smooth. Amused, even. It speaks his name with equal stress on each syllable, drawn out for emphasis. Dean... Win... Chest... Er.

That’s never a good sign. Especially since Dean had been booked under an alias.

"I’m Edgar. It's time we talked."

Dean winces and pushes himself off of the cot. Guesses his fake papers hadn't passed muster, or more likely, they actually bothered to run his prints today, unlike the last few times he'd been arrested. This far into the belly of the beast, it makes sense. A lot of places these days, small-town cops are hesitant to put "normal" guys like him and Sam into a system that could end with them indentured for the rest of their lives.

It’s a different world, for sure, than the one John Winchester had brought his boys up in, if cops could be counted on for discretion and a hasty but safe escort out of town.

"Name's Jones," he tries anyway. It’s worth a shot.

The man on the other side of the bars, Edgar, isn’t police, doesn’t look to be anybody particularly Official; he’s dressed much like Dean, jeans and layers and a blue Carhartt jacket, though he looks sleeker and better fed than Dean has felt in a while.

"You’re not fooling anybody, Dean, not anymore,” Edgar said with a smirk. “You’re Dean Winchester, wanted since the age of 15 in connection with terrorist activities. Son of Mary Winchester, terrorist, deceased, son of John Winchester, terrorist, deceased, brother of Sam Winchester, terrorist, location unknown. And a giant pain in the ass of my employer."

“My parents were heroes, you Corporate fuck,” Dean growls. He looks at the man more closely and feels slick oily fear slither over his heart. It was Roman's man, the one they thought they'd killed back at the salvage yard, where Bobby’s house had been nothing but a smoking crater.

"You're looking healthy," Dean says, trying to keep his voice steady.

A smile tugs at the corner of the Edgar's mouth. "My boss provides excellent medical benefits." 

“What am I being charged with, exactly?” 

The man steps closer to the bars, a whisper away from touching.

“What aren’t you being charged with, Dean?” he asks. “Aggravated assault, impersonating police officers, impersonating federal agents, impersonating Corporate Compliance officers. Then of course there’s general acts of terrorism, aiding and abetting runaways, grand theft auto, robbery, aggravated assault, murder … enough felonies to see you tried and executed for treason 20 times over.”

Dean swallows his fear and hardens his stance, eyes burning with fury. 

"You'll be hanging in a week, son," Edgar says. "If you're lucky."

He smiles again, teeth large and shark bright. “You might be interested to learn that your property has been impounded and will be auctioned off tomorrow.”

Dean snorts. His baby is safe in a storage shed in Missouri; all their weapons and ammo can be replaced.

But Roman's man keeps smiling at him, looking exceptionally pleased with himself.

“That was clever, trying to pass your brother off as a blue-collar,” Edgar says, and Dean’s body ices over in terror. “Big guy, strong. Would make an exceptional factory man or farm hand.” He leans in closer still, till Dean can smell the onions Edgar had eaten at lunch. “Still, I think he might fetch more money at the auction if we give him a purple collar, don’t you think?”

“My brother?” Dean tries for time, but it’s pointless and both men know it.

“You did an excellent job forging his papers to look like a slave, Dean," Edgar says. "And as of tomorrow evening, he will be.” 

Edgar turns and walks back down the brightly lit hallway, whistling a jaunty tune that Dean can barely hear over the sudden jackhammer that is his heart.

 

 

Dean paces his cell. Four steps west, six steps south, four steps east, sidestep the toilet.

He's spent his fair share of time behind bars, of course he has. What kind of anti-Corporate rebel gets to be his age without doing some time?

But he's usually in a little more control of the situation than he is now, and he usually has his brother standing slightly just behind him, a comforting shadow that always has his back.

Now he's alone, deep in Corporate territory, and Sam has been impounded like a fucking piece of property.

Dean's cell is in the bowels of the Corporate-County building. No windows, and his belt, shoelaces, and anything he might use to pick a lock had been confiscated.

Sam's here somewhere, he knows it, but he doesn't have a clue how he's going to bust out of here, find Sam, break him free, and still try to stop Roman from rolling out his new plan.

Four steps west. Six steps south. Four steps east. 

A door at the end of the hall opens with a heavy metallic clang and Dean backs away from the bars, tense and ready in case he's given any sort of opening. 

"Dean, Dean, Dean."

He closes his eyes in annoyance. 

"What do you want, Meg." 

She's wearing a barely there skirt and a gold lamé tank top with a scandalously low v-neck, worlds removed from her usual smart black business suit.

"That's not a very warm welcome."

He folds his arms across his chest and glares at her.

She holds her hands up, a gesture that's meant to placate him, but her lips are twisted in her trademark smirk.

"Heard you got yourself pinched, Dean. Just thought you might need a little help."

"From you? No thanks."

"Your loss, Dean. I'm not the one behind bars." She flips her dark hair over one shoulder and turns to leave.

He lets her almost reach the exit before he calls out, "What's in it for you?"

She turns, appraises him with one arched brow. "Does it matter?”

He leans against the cinderblock wall, and folds his arms over his chest, waiting.

“Roman and Crowley? They both hate me almost as much as they hate you. Almost as much as they hate each other. I just figured it seems we could each use a friend," she says with an exaggerated shrug. 

"I ain't your friend."

"That's where you're wrong, Dean. 'Cause I’m here to help you, and that makes us friends."

"Do you have an actual plan, Meg? Or do you just want to talk me to death before my trial even starts?"

She whistles and a second man steps out of the shadows. He’s about Dean’s height and build but he looks like the world has been even less kind to him than it has to the Winchesters.

Meg produces a key, though where she managed to hide it in that getup is a mystery to Dean.

"I always have a plan, baby."

 

 

"Where the hell did you get that key?" Dean asks, hopping on one foot as he tries to remove his socks and jeans at a go.

"Do you really want to know?"

He considers, then acknowledges that he probably does not.

"Where's your Angel buddy?" Meg asks. She's trying for casual, trying kinda hard.

"Why do you care?"

They're standing in a tiny bathroom, nose to nose, and he would truly love to spit in her face. Some combination of his own sense of preservation and the need to find (free) Sammy keeps him relatively civil.

“Who’s the guy pretending to be me?”

She considers before giving him a straight answer. Dean had been prepared to play the question game all day with her, she was every bit as stubborn as he was.

“Let’s just say he’s a supporter of your work,” Meg says. 

“And what, he wants to hang in my place? Did you find him at the nut house?”

She doesn’t answer.

“For fuck’s sake, Meg.”

She shrugs. “He’s of mostly sound mind. But he’s had a stroke, and he can’t really work and he can’t really afford to get better.”

He’s silent for a minute thinking about that. It doesn’t feel right to leave him there. He’ll be hanged just for taking part in the escape.

“Really Dean, he’s okay with it.”

They're both half naked, changing clothes. Dean is shimmying into Meg's hooker outfit while she pulls on his worn jeans and rolls up the cuffs.

"Is Sam still here?" he asks, changing the subject. He doesn’t feel good about leaving some poor sap in his place, but his need to get to Sam is trumping everything else.

She shakes her head. "He was sent to impound and then to the DOCC.”

Dean grits his teeth. "I have to get him out of there."

She rolls her eyes. "I can only bust out one Winchester at a time."

He cracks the door to check the empty hallway and gestures her to follow.

They make their way up the emergency staircase without running into anybody.

"My legs look way better in this skirt than yours do, anyway," Dean says.

She glances down at his legs and snickers. "Keep dreaming, Hopalong."

They’re out of the staircase and halfway across the lobby of the Corporate-County building when a policeman steps up in front of them.

"Prostitution is a collarable offense, you know," the guard says, eyeing Dean's tiny skirt, hairy legs, and the smeary makeup Meg had hastily applied to his face.

Dean fingers his shiny gold top. "I'm not a hooker."

"He's my husband," Meg drawls, looking the cop up and down. "Just a little roleplaying that got out of hand."

The guard looks disgusted and studies them, probably to see if there's something he can bring them in for.

"Where's your rings?"

"We're very good at playing our parts," Dean says with a wink, shoving down his panic and playing it cool.

The guard looks like he wants to say something else when another cop calls out, "Hey Rod, we got a situation upstairs."

Officer Rod turns abruptly to go see about it, and Dean and Meg make for the doors casual as you please. They're two steps out the front door when the alarm begins screaming behind them.

 _Fucking Meg_ , he thinks as he kicks off the size 10 high heels she somehow managed to find for him so they can take off running. 

 

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/quote3_zps87a0beda.png.html)

Nobody would tell Sam what was happening or where they were taking him. One minute he’d been sitting in their “borrowed” truck, and the next minute the Corporate Police were swarming him. He was roughly pulled out of the passenger seat and shoved up against the door, hands cuffed behind him. Then he was led—literally, by his collar on a leash—to a squad car and shoved into the back seat, knocking his head on the roof in the process.

He was taken to the Corporate-County building downtown, where he expected to be processed and sent to a holding cell. Instead he ended up in a room filled floor to ceiling with metal shelves holding boxes and cartons and computers, all tagged and numbered.

When he sees their duffels carried in and sorted out on a table for processing, he realizes what he should have already known. 

He's in Impound Processing.

_Fuck._

He sucks in a deep breath, trying not to panic. Dean will find him before he’s auctioned off like a drug mule’s car.

He has to.

His leash is clipped to the wall just above his head and he's rudely pushed down to his knees. He's off balance but there's enough give, just, to stop him from choking.

And then he waits. 

"What's going on?" Sam asks the first cop who comes near him.

His legs start tingling from the way he's sitting and he tries to maneuver them to get some feeling back without cutting off his air supply.

"Hey, I know my papers were all in order," Sam says to the second cop who comes within earshot.

All the detectives and cops and staff who wander in and out ignore his questions like he’s invisible. He’s heard this is sometimes the case in areas where the Corporate tenets are heavily entrenched, but it is still deeply unsettling. When they were kids Dean had sometimes pretended Sam didn’t exist, if Sam was being especially irritating, and it was the worst kind of punishment. He would follow Dean around begging to be noticed but Dean was really good at playing the Sam-Was-Never-Born game when he wanted to, and usually it only ended when John came home and told Dean to cut it out or when Sam broke down and started crying. Then Dean would look sheepish and apologize and give Sam a popsicle or make him hot chocolate, and everything would be all better. 

Now, surrounded by officials who act like he’s no more human than a bloodied hunting knife or a bag of coke, he feels like that little kid again, wants to stamp his foot and scream until someone acknowledges him.

Wants Dean to come along and make it better.

They leave him alone with his thoughts for a long, long time. Too much time. His mind keeps returning to the 18 months he spent in the camp, 18 months that had felt more like a century. 

 

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/quote11_zpsfc0656a9.png.html) _"Sam Winchester. Nice to finally meet you." He flipped the hard wooden chair around and sat down, eyes boring into Sam's. "I’m your re-education specialist."_

_Sam studied the man who’d been assigned to torture him. He was tall, thin, in his 40s. He had straw blond hair and cruel blue eyes. He bore an uncanny resemblance to..._

_“Who are you?”_

_"You don’t know? I always heard what a smart boy you were." His lips twist in a smile so cold Sam feels the chill like ice water flooding his veins._

_"Lucifer?" Sam asks, stunned._

_"The very same."_

_"Shouldn’t you be off running the world? This seems a bit below your pay grade."_

_"Let’s just say I've taken a special interest in your rehabilitation, Sammy. We’re going to be spending a lot of …quality time together.”_

_"My brother’ll come for me."_

_"You won't believe that for long, Sam. Soon you’ll be lucky to remember your name."_

_Lucifer whistles as he sets about strapping Sam to the metal bed frame and starting up the control box._

_Sam’s screams echo in his head long after the electrical current has stopped pulsing through his body._

 

 

After several hours, Sam has to piss and his legs are beginning to shake. When a bored voice calls out “Charge Number 4-5-4-8-9-3?” he barely notices.

Sam continues to stare at his knee before belatedly recognizing the number assigned to his forged slave papers. “Here!” he calls, trying to climb to his feet. His legs are numb and it's a graceless display before finally someone hauls him to his feet. His cramped muscles and stiff joints cry unhappily as he's pulled to standing, wrists still cuffed, neck still tethered to the rusty bolt drilled into the sickly green tile.

He’s unhooked from the wall and led down an elevator to the underground garage where a Corporate Collection van is waiting.

“Where are you taking me?” Sam asks.

“Auction house,” the officer says gruffly.

Sam feels a strange relief that someone's actually talking to him, until the words penetrate the fog that he's been wrapped in for the past couple of hours.

"Wait, auction? I already have a custodian." 

Sam looks around wildly for any sort of chance to gain the upper hand, but his legs have been tightly shackled together with very little give, and his hands are cuffed behind his back again. Also, two goons approximately the size of cement mixers are holding his arms tightly as he shuffles towards the waiting van.

Obviously, the people transporting him are aware that he is not exactly the mild-mannered factory foreman that his papers say. They’re treating him like a terrorist, like the murderer Richard Roman declared him to be several months ago when he decided he’d put up with the Winchesters for long enough.

Sam feels his window of escape flutter out of reach, a careless butterfly.

 

 

The euphemistically named Corporate Collection House was an imposing hulk of brick that had once been a middle school. Though it had been abandoned and neglected for years before its overhaul as a slave auction house, somehow it still retained the scent of chalk, poster paint, and sweaty pre-teens.

Now, of course, many of the former classrooms had been transformed into holding pens and offices. The auditorium is relatively unchanged, though. Where once 7th graders warbled _The Sound of Music_ or stumbled their way through performances of _Our Town_ , men and women were now sold to business owners or individuals to work off their debts.

Not that the official Corporate channels used words like “sold” of course. Everything is about “keeping charges safe from themselves” and “helping charges to stand on their own again” and “fulfilling our custodial duties.” 

Sam had actually been here once before, trying to help out a bartender named Meredith who was being railroaded by a collection agent that had his eye on her. It had turned out to be a trap for Sam’s dad set up by Meg, a Corporate spy with alliances that shifted with the tides. There actually _had_ been a bartender, but by the time Sam and Dean arrived she was long gone. 

He tries to remember what he learned from studying the building’s schematic all those years ago. He’s looked at a lot of other blueprints in the intervening years, but he’s pretty sure he knows where each of the exits used to be located.

Sam is taken to a small gymnasium with faded basketball lines and one sagging hoop. Nobody's played in here for a long time, by the looks of it. 

There are a bunch of other blue collars sitting around on the old wooden bleachers (painted red for _Devil Pride!_ ), awaiting their fates. About 30 or so men and women of various ages, all with the same lined faces and worn eyes. 

Blue collar auctions aren't all that common—generally, a charge with technical skills or training will be shunted off to a factory or a farm and pretty much spend the rest of their sentence in the same location. Occasionally, however, a company might liquidate its slaveholdings for some quick cash. This turns out to be the case with the people Sam is sharing the gym with, who all seem to know one another. 

Some of them know him too. A wiry man with a craggy face and thinning black hair wanders over to Sam’s corner and asks under his breath if Sam wasn’t one of the Winchester boys.

Sam nods, not seeing much point in lying.

“Don’t suppose this is some kind of prison break from the inside?”

“I really wish it was, man,” Sam says, gesturing with his shackled hands. “Guess my luck just ran out.”

The man shrugs. “Gotta stay here for my little girl anyway. They’ll just take her if I run. But it was always kinda nice to imagine that if she found herself underwater, you boys might be able to get her out of the country. I hope you get out of this.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Please, son, call me Lorne. We’re all slaves here anyway. Never gonna be a 'Sir' again.”

“Now, Lorne,” says a woman sitting nearby. “You know as well as I do that we are debtors and criminals. We don’t wanna get in trouble for using the s-word.”

“Ha!” Lorne scoffs. “Those Corporate dicks can take their s-word and shove it up their asses.”

There’s general agreement and some laughter here and there. Then the heavy metal doors to the gym open with a clang, and everyone quiets instantly, the whole room gone hushed and still.

Dick Roman walks onto the basketball court and smiles at them all fondly.

 _Well, this just went from bad to fucked_ , Sam thinks as he silently gets to his feet, waiting to see what Roman will do.

“Sam Winchester,” Roman says as he strolls over to the bleachers, with the same affable smile and dead eyes Sam has watched on countless interviews with the Corporate Networks. “Or should I call you 4-5-4-8-9-3?”

Sam says nothing as Roman moves easily around the other charges in the room, eyes never leaving him. The people closest to Sam melt away silently and cling to the shadows.

“You boys have been a thorn in my side for a long, long time, Mr. Winchester.” He pulls a purple collar out of his pocket.

“Today's the day I pull out that thorn.”

“What about the auction?” Sam asks.

Roman smiles. “It's already happened, Sam. You’re mine now.” He grabs Sam’s chin and tilts his head from side to side. “It’s a pity I don’t really like boys,” Roman says. “But I do love making an example.”

 

 

It’s a couple of hours after Roman’s visit before a guard is sent to collect Sam. Like he’s become contagious, none of the other charges waiting in the gymnasium come near Sam or even look at him after his blue collar had been snapped off and replaced with the purple personal collar. Though they’re made of the exact same polycarbonate resin, the purple collar feels heavier around Sam’s neck, feels dirtier.

It doesn’t even have to mean what they’re all thinking, what _Sam’s_ thinking. Plenty of purple collars work as chauffeurs and cooks and housekeeping staff and assistants. Still, they’re generally chosen because they’re easy on the eyes, and nobody cares too much about their skills with a rake or a whisk.

Everybody with a purple collar, everybody who _sees_ a purple collar, knows there’s at least some _possibility_ that sexual favor might be in the job description. 

Sam doesn’t blame them for staying away from him, but he also doesn’t like feeling diseased, dirty. He traces the scar on his palm, a trick Dean taught him whenever he started thinking about his time at the camps too much. It helped ground him, let him wait calmly for whatever came next, look for an opportunity to escape. 

The guard steers him into the locker room, where a middle-aged woman with wispy blonde hair and watery blue eyes is waiting for him. She’s wearing a blue collar herself, and she tuts and grumbles as she prepares to clean him up.

“For heaven’s sake, Marty, you can’t expect me to shower him all cuffed up like this!” she exclaims, and the guard shrugs.

“Very strict orders, straight from Roman’s PA. This one’s supposed to be slippery as an eel. Chains stay.”

She looks Sam over, shaking her head, and then reaches for a long pair of scissors.

“Hey!” Sam says, trying to jump back.

She looks irritated. “I’ll not be punished because you’re feeling modest, boy. I’m to clean you up and ready you for transport, same as I do all the other purples pass through here.”

He feels a wave of panic so irrational that he tries to take off running, never mind the armed guard standing behind him, or the fact that his wrists are shackled to his ankles. The grubby tiles around him dissolve into one of the interrogation rooms at the camp, and the exasperated maternal slave grows taller and thinner until Lucifer himself is standing before him, holding a very sharp pair of scissors and explaining to Sam what life will be like if he decides Sam no longer needs eyelids.

 _You’re not here, I got out_ , Sam thinks as he gives a strangled yell and lurches for the door. His hobbled legs cause him to pitch over, slamming his shoulder on the bathroom floor. _I got out!_

The shouting can be heard from the gymnasium, and the former slave-workers of the Decatur Agro-Fuel factory awaiting purchase shift uneasily and clear their throats. Several of them touch the blue collars around their necks, all of them thankful for their status as indentured factory workers for the first time in many, many years.

It’s late evening when Sam is delivered to Roman’s condo, a penthouse on the Gold Coast with stunning views of the stormy lake and the city lights sparkling far below. Dick had ordered Sam’s clothes to be burned back at Corporate Collections and replaced with the standard slave uniform, but the mousy woman in charge of cleaning him up had given up finding anything that would fit and sent him back to Dick in his own clothes, freshly laundered.

His collar is bolted to a sturdy ring protruding from the polished oak floor with a short length of chain that forces Sam to kneel, hands behind his back, forehead on the floor.

"Sorry, Dude," says the delivery guy as he heads towards the door, and he sounds like he means it. 

"Aww, what a _nice_ man," Lucifer says, sitting down beside Sam and running his fingers through Sam's hair. "It's that simple common courtesy that's missing these days, don't you think Sammy?"

"You're not here," Sam says through gritted teeth but he's having a harder time remembering if that's true or not. He tries to scratch at his scarred palm but the cuffs don't have enough give.

Sam is starting to regret that he didn’t let Dean in on how bad his hallucinations were getting before they were picked up. The standard Winchester response of “I’m okay,” had seemed like a good idea at the time.

It's okay though. There's a plan. Dean just needs to follow the plan. As long as he managed to avoid the trap Corporate had set for them, the plan could still work.

"Oh, Sammy, silly boy, Dean’s not coming,” Lucifer says. “Nobody is. You're still with me at the Southwest Re-Ed facility." He begins to sing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” over and over while he pets Sam’s hair, until it’s almost a mercy when Roman shows up.

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/kneelingsamjeans-resize_zps4b050d3a.png.html)

 

“So what exactly was the plan, Sam?" Roman asks. He’s sitting on his white couch, sipping a glass of scotch. "You boys thought you'd, what, break up my Shareholder's Gala like two denim-wearing Robin Hoods? What did you really expect to gain?"

His voice is buttery smooth like it always is on talk shows and interviews. 

Sam is still kneeling on the floor as he'd been secured after delivery. His back muscles have been spasming for the past hour. At least his hallucinations have mercifully stopped, for the moment. He knows where he is, knows who he is. Knows where Lucifer isn't.

Not that his current, non-hallucinatory predicament provides much comfort.

"I’ve always been curious why my dear friend Lucifer was so enchanted with you. Care to enlighten me?"

When Sam continues to stare at the dark line separating two boards in the hardwood floor, doing his level best to ignore Dick, Roman stands up and stalks over to him. One shove with his Italian leather loafer and Sam is on the floor, shoulders wrenched behind him, collar pulling uncomfortably at his throat.

Then Dick steps on the short chain connecting Sam's neck to the bolt in the floor, and Sam can't breathe at all.

"Don't get me wrong, I loved watching your fuck-buddy ruin himself over you. I just wish I knew _why_."

Sam struggles against the crushing band around his throat but his hands are useless, helpless wriggling things, snugged against his hips. Starburst fireworks shoot off behind his eyelids as he begins to lose consciousness.

"Aww, Sammy, aren't you going to stand up for me?" Lucifer asks. It's the last thing Sam hears before he passes out.

 

 

Dean braces himself against the sink in Charlie's apartment, trying to get a grip.

"Did you chuckleheads even _have_ a plan?" Meg asks from her perch on Charlie's couch.

"Yes, we had a plan," Dean snaps. It might not have been the best plan, but the increasingly tightening net Roman had thrown around them was making it clear they needed to gamble. The plans Frank had uncovered were too awful to think about. They’d had to do something.

"So, what, you thought you'd stroll into his headquarters and ask him real sweet to overthrow the system he created?"

"Shut up, Meg."

The silence stretches out until Charlie asks, " _Was_ that the plan?"

“If you hadn’t decided to help us?” Dean says. “Yeah, more or less. Except with less asking and more holding Dick at gunpoint.”

Charlie looks like she’s reconsidering her part in this, and Dean closes his eyes. "Please tell me you have alcohol."

"I have a year's supply of Ener-G Fizz," Charlie says, sounding apologetic.

Dean gags a little and she says, "What? I'm a coder. And a spaz. Alcohol and me? Don't really mix."

Dean starts looking through her cupboards anyway.

"Yahtzee!" he says a moment later, pulling out a full bottle of amoretto liqueur.

"Oh, right, I needed that for a recipe," Charlie says. When Dean raises an eyebrow she says "Yeah, baking and me also don't really mix. But there was this super cute brunette that just moved in down the hall and—"

"Save it," Dean says, although if he’s honest, if his brother weren’t missing, he'd love to hear more about Charlie’s adventures with her new neighbor.

He uncaps the bottle and takes a deep pull, makes a terrible face, and then goes back for more.

"Is that normal?" Charlie asks Meg.

"Beats me. We're not exactly friends." When Charlie gives her a puzzled look, Meg shrugs and says, "We just have a lot of common enemies."

Charlie puts her headphones back on and continues twiddling with the Corporate radio while Meg and Dean drink trade the bottle of sticky sweet liquor back and forth.

“Um, Dean,” Charlie says after a half hour has passed. She looks even paler than usual and Dean wonders what the fuck is next.

“The good news is I know where your brother is.”

 

 

The abandoned school they find on the south side is just close enough to a Corporate wireless channel that Charlie can still work most of her magic. The nonstop staccato tapping of her fingers on the keyboard reminds Dean of Sam, making him feel both irritated and strangely homesick.

He and Meg are sharing a bottle of Jack, but he still doesn’t let his guard down around her. He can only hang out with Meg for so long before he remembers how much damage she's caused him and his friends, how Lucifer was her number one loyalty and Lucifer _fucking broke his brother_... Even though Lucifer’s locked up in seclusion, even though Crowley’s now gunning for her, doesn’t mean he trusts her. But she does have her uses. The unfortunate truth is they need each other right now.

“Why are you really helping us?” Dean wonders aloud.

“Honestly?”

“Sure, give it a try.”

She sneers at him and swipes the bottle, leans her head back against the wall.

“I’m trying to convince your Angel buddy that I’m one of the good guys now. You know, so I can get in his pants.”

“Oh, fuck,” Dean coughs up a mouthful of whiskey like he hadn’t done since he was a teenager. “No more.”

“What, Dean, you don’t want to hear about all the fun we had when he was playing crazy?”

“No. Not even a little bit.”

“Looney bins have an excellent selection of toys, you know. If you’re creative.”

“Charlie!” Dean hollers. “How’s it going over there?”

Meg grins at him like she knows she’s won this round. 

“I think I’ve almost set up the feed we need,” Charlie calls back. “We should have everything in place before the fundraiser.” 

The typing stops and she wanders over to where they’re sitting on the grimy floor and drops down beside them. “Gimme,” she says, reaching for the whiskey.

“Um…” Dean says.

“Oh, c’mon, I’m a big girl,” she says, and he passes her the bottle regretfully. She takes a tiny sip and predictably has a coughing fit.

“You okay?” he asks. She grimaces but gives him a thumbs-up.

“Okay, Charlie’s got the software glitch covered, plus security clearance.” He looks at her. “You can do that, right?”

“As long as the protocol is—”

He raises a hand. “Good enough. Meg, you’re in charge of—” he breaks off to look at her and shrugs. “General sneakiness, I guess.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” she says with an eye-roll.

“We’ve got more reinforcements coming in to help with security and crowd control. I think if everyone remembers their jobs and the timing works out…maybe we have a chance.”

It was the most optimistic he could be, but it seemed to do the trick. Charlie gives him a wide smile and says, “Let’s overthrow the government, bitches.”

 

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/quote12_zps62af418a.png.html)

 

 

"Sam?"

Sam moans, takes a ragged breath, and then starts coughing again. His throat is raw and his head aches from lack of oxygen.

"You're Sam, right?"

He opens one eye to see an anxious man—boy—looking down at him. His eyes are wide and sympathetic, and Sam groans again and tries to roll over.

"Water?" he croaks.

"Of course." The boy rises and leaves the room for a moment, and Sam tests all his bindings to see what freedom has been left him. 

Not much. His neck is still tethered to the bolt on the floor, his wrist and ankle cuffs still joined. He’s stretched out on his back though instead of hunched over kneeling, and his hands are now cuffed in front of him, so he supposes he should be thankful for small favors.

The boy returns swiftly and spreads a soft white blanket over Sam's body before uncapping a bottle of water. Sam raises his head as much as possible and the boy tips the bottle to Sam's dry lips. 

"Sam Winchester, right?" he asks when Sam has finished drinking and laid his head on the floor again.

"I know you?" Sam asks, and the kid shakes his head. "I remember from when you were on the news last fall. When they said you and your brother killed all those charges."

"Right." Sam closes his eyes again.

"I know you didn't do that."

"How?"

"What?"

"How do you know?"

"Because you're a hero," the kid says, and Sam chuckles darkly.

"I'm a trainwreck," Sam disagrees. "But I'm not a murderer, no. They faked that footage."

"I knew it!" the kid says. 

"Who're you?" Sam asks, noting the purple collar around the boy’s throat, though otherwise he's dressed in simple slacks and a button down, not any obvious slave clothing.

"Kevin."

"Hi Kevin. Thanks for the water." He winces at the toll each word takes out on his abused throat. "We need to get the hell out of here."

 

 

Cas finally shows up the day before Roman’s big event, looking vaguely confused like always and holding a bag of groceries under one arm. Dean scowls at him and growls, "Finally come to your senses?"

"I don’t want to fight, Dean."

"So you're what, here to make us dinner?"

Cas turns to Meg. “I thought that was obvious. Was that not obvious?”

"C'mon in, Clarence," Meg says with more affection than Dean's ever heard from her.

Cas thrusts a netted bag into Dean’s hand. “Please accept these tangelos as a gesture of solidarity.”

Dean pleads and threatens and shames, pulls out every trick in his arsenal to get Cas to help them out, but Cas parries every attempt.

"You've actually been in that dammed building, Cas, we could really use your eyes and ears on the inside."

"Did you know that dolphins don't drink sea water?"

"Dammit, Cas!"

"Apparently salt water is damaging to dolphins just like other mammals."

"Cas, dammit, they've got my brother!"

Cas goes to look out the graffiti covered window but doesn't answer.

Dean scowls at his back. "What, did you run out of things to say about freaking dolphins?" Dean finally asks.

Cas gives him a wounded look. "I did not think you appreciated my dolphin facts."

"You got that right."

After engineering Sam’s rescue from the re-ed camp, Cas had staged an unsuccessful attempt to gain control of the Angels, whose infighting had reached epic proportions. It had not gone well, and Cas had become increasingly unstable, finally deciding he was no longer capable of fighting for the rebellion any longer. None of Dean’s threats or pleas or bribes had worked to change Cas’s mind so far, and Dean was out of patience.

 

 

 

 

Sam tugs futilely at his bonds, more force of habit than anything else. Besides the fact that Roman's right-hand woman Susan is watching him like a hawk, the penthouse is crawling with purple collars—someone to tend the patio plants, someone to cook, someone to clean. It doesn't seem very cost-effective, until Sam takes note of how very thin they all are. Guesses it’s not too much overhead if you don’t feed your slaves very much.

Kevin seems pretty well in comparison. He'd whispered to Sam the night before that he was here 'voluntarily' and hoped Roman would honor the contract and let him go in a few years. 

"I shouldn't even hope that, right?" Kevin had said. "If he lets me go it's probably because he found some younger, more talented musician to blackmail into being his full-time CD player."

“If tomorrow night goes well, maybe—” Sam starts to say, but breaks off when another charge enters the room.

He’s given up on testing his bonds, though he’ll start tugging on them again in an hour if history is anything to go by. Except for bathroom breaks, he’s been chained to the middle of Dick’s living room for since his arrival and he’s going kind of crazy. There’s a bit more slack in his chain now, so every so often he'll do push-ups or sit-ups just to do something.

He hasn’t eaten since his arrest though, and after a few dozen push-ups he gets kind of dizzy. 

Some hero. He’s going to starve to death in Roman’s penthouse surrounded by slaves, every one of them too scared to feed themselves let alone help him out.

He wants to take back each and every time he ever made fun of Dean for eating like a pig. A cheeseburger would pretty much make him weep at this point.

Kevin is practicing his cello, playing something so sad and low that even Sam, who would be the first to admit he doesn't know crap about music, feels an ache in his chest. When he gets to the end of the song he stops what he’s doing, Sam guesses to tune up. He’s just plucking one string over and over again. Pluuuck-pluck-pluck. Pluck. Pluck-Pluuuck. Pluuuck-pluck.

He tunes the same note over and over until Sam finally gets it.

It’s Morse code.

He looks over his shoulder and Kevin smiles at him, hopeful and scared.

 

 

The lobby of the RRE Headquarters has been transformed into a flowering garden. Tropical plants of every color imaginable decorate the normally sparse space, and the tall glass elevator has been lit with rippling blue lights that give it the appearance of a waterfall, the effect only enhanced by the wall fountain near the front doors.

“People are gonna be peeing all night,” mutters the event coordinator, running a hand through her auburn hair. She’s not a huge fan of water.

She moves from station to station, checking on the food, the décor, the musicians, the stage where Mr. Roman will make his big speech. She’s been told enough times that everything has to be absolutely perfect. She tugs nervously at the purple collar around her neck, making notes on her clipboard. She confers with the head of event security, a no-nonsense woman in her mid-forties. She makes sure the slave handler knows where to stash the purple collared slaves when their keepers don’t want them around. He tells her terrible jokes to make her laugh but the look she gives him is so threatening he scampers back to his post, all gawky limbs and goofy grin.

Finally she stands in the center of the large space and surveys her work. 

It’s paradise. 

For Dick, at least, and a few hundred of his closest, richest friends.

She wishes she had her tools with her. If anyplace she’d ever been deserved to light up the sky until nothing remained but ash, it was this office building. She couldn’t understand why no one else saw the coils of evil that wrapped around the skyscraper.

She tries not to look at the centerpiece onstage, at the slave chained to the wall, blindfolded and helpless. She tries but it’s impossible to not see. He’s shaking, though she can’t tell whether from fear, the chill of the air conditioning, or the stress placed on his arms from his almost hanging position. He’s wearing a pair of worn jeans and nothing else, and it’s the most tasteless thing she’s ever seen. That’s saying a lot considering she’s helped her mom plan weddings and events for the fabulously wealthy since she was 10. 

She remembers him, the slave onstage, from the bad time, the time when her anger got the better of her and she had to go ‘take some time off to think about what she’d done.’ (What she’d done was set her brother’s custodian on fire.) By rights she should have been hanged by now. Her doctor though, he'd taken a liking to her and pulled some strings and here she is, sex toy and party planner to the stars.

The slave had been very kind to her when she was in the institution, and she's sorry he has to be here tonight. She wishes she could help him escape. She wishes she could cleanse the entire building with the purity of fire. No more custodians, no more slaves.

“I’m impressed, Marin!” 

She turns, plasters a fake smile on her face, and crosses the room to her own custodian.

“What do you think, Dr. Kadinsky?” she asks sweetly.

“Perfection. Just like you. I knew you’d do us both proud.” He gives her a kiss. She’s well-schooled enough to hide her revulsion. She leans in and returns his kiss as fire dances behind her eyes.

 

 

 _Richard Roman knows how to work a tux_ , Dick thinks as he admires himself in the full length mirror.

Richard Roman talks about himself in the third person, and Richard Roman looks like he was born in a tuxedo, and never mind that he spent the first few years of his life scrabbling for everything he got, every scrap of food, every piece of shabby clothing.

Dick has never hid the fact that he was born poor as a churchmouse, but he doesn’t talk about it much these days. “The Story of Dick” has served its purpose, he tells people now, and there’s no sense looking to the past when this great nation needs to be looking to the future. His hard-luck story is the kind of thing that’s helped him convince hundreds of thousands of fence-sitters that they would be more likely to follow him up the economic ladder rather than sliding down into their own poverty and ruin. Richard Roman is nothing if not a gifted speaker, and in the early days he knew just how to charm an audience, get them eating out of their hands, so a system of “compassionate custody,” of helping people out until they could help themselves, made more sense than hundreds of years of democracy had.

That his history is just that, made up so he would seem relatable to the idiots at the bottom of the food chain, well, nobody needs to know that, and thank goodness he took control of the country’s communication systems when he did before some snot-nosed journalist uncovered his actual history.

He’s garnered a lot of goodwill but probably not enough to survive the revelation that he killed his parents for their life insurance.

Some of his supporters are clamoring for Dick to run for president and he pretends to consider the idea but he knows he’s the most powerful man in the country, and soon he’ll be the most powerful man in the world. The president is his puppet, and it’s useful to keep things that way. 

Once he lays out the rest of his plans tonight for a select few attendees at his Shareholder’s Gala, things will fall right into place. He and Crowley can finish the job of ruining Lucifer, and then he’ll set his sights on Crowley.

The fly in the ointment is Dean Winchester, running loose and probably wreaking havoc in his city. He’d had him, the little shit, and can’t believe he’s gotten away. 

But, he’s pretty sure he can get Dean to show his face tonight if he thinks it will save his brother. He’s put out the word, Dean’s freedom for Sam’s life, and he’s sure the network of renegades and thieves have clued Dean in.

By midnight, he’ll have both Winchesters in his grasp and then it will be time for a very public execution. That should stamp out the last fires of rebellion that keep springing up.

A little dancing, a little drinking, a little hanging. What a glorious day, Dick thinks as he adjusts his bowtie one last time.

He steps out of the restroom and makes his way to the stage to thunderous applause and cheers, and smiles benignly at his friends, shareholders, constituents. That little slut Kandinsky had vouched for had indeed done a marvelous job transforming his spacious, cold lobby into a place of warmth and revelry.

The lights are low except for the rippling blue lights dancing on the glass elevator, and the spotlight trained on the stage. He looks out on the sea of tuxes and sparkling gowns, with the occasional purple collar trailing behind somebody, and feels as much contentment as a sociopath like him could ever hope to.

Truly, he has arrived.

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/quote2_zps844d7b39.png.html)

 

Dean is seven blocks away from RRE Headquarters, watching Roman's face light up the sky as he greets his honored guests and fellow citizens.

"This is a special day for the Northwest Corporate State, and I’m flattered so many of my favorite people could attend my little party," he says, pausing to smile modestly.

Dean takes out his pistol and practices target shooting Roman's 20-foot projected forehead until he sees a woman hurry past, looking back at him over her shoulder.

Right. When in Roman's...

"I know many of you are aware of how much hard work has gone into creating this little slice of nirvana here in the good ol' US of A," Roman continues, "and how we must fight each and every day against those who would threaten to disrupt our way of lives. It was with great sorrow that I learned one of these threats was here in our city, in our county, intent on assassinating me and whoever else he could wipe out!"

The crowd boos and the camera moves over Dick's shoulder to where a slave, naked from the waist up, is chained to the platform.

Dean wants to punch someone. Shoot someone. Kill someone.

"I know our 'special guest' needs no introduction," Dick tells the crowd, to nervous titters, "but nevertheless, I'd like to formally introduce you to one Samuel Winchester, whose feats of sabotage and terror have been felt all over this country! Samuel Winchester who has rained fear and anger down upon us just because we're trying to help our great nation!

"Now, I don't know about you," Dick continues, his conversational patter still working it's magic even though a current of deep unease is rippling through the crowd, "but my Grammy told me that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Am I right?"

Heads nod slowly.

"My Grammy was a very wise woman, but today I’m going to have to disagree with her. One Winchester in the hand is fine, but let's see if we can't flush the other one out of the bush!"

Nervous applause.

"Dean Winchester, I know you're watching," Dick smiles directly into the camera. Dean is vibrating with fury.

"And you probably think you're going to swoop in here and save your brother and yourself, but not this time." He snaps his finger and Edgar steps up next to Dick. He's holding a horse whip.

"If you don't want your brother flayed on live tv, you'll turn yourself into the nearest police station."

He makes a big show of checking his watch and says, "You have till, oh, say ten o'clock."

 

 

The slave handler leads the purple collared charges to a hallway off of the main lobby where they can be checked in like handbags and coats. He chats with them like they're people, and the charges all look at each other uneasily.

"My name's Garth, I'm here to make y'all comfortable while the big-wigs have their party," he says as he leads a group of them towards the conference room. "Make sure everybody gets a purple ticket so we'll know who's supposed to pick you up later!"

Krissy snatches her ticket from him with a scowl. She hasn't been caught long enough to be "trained up properly" ( _gag_ ) and she's been operating in a pretty constant state of rage since she was snagged. 

She had done some investigating after the giant paid her apartment a visit, enough to realize that she'd unknowingly rejected help from Sam-fucking-Winchester. But the next time she tried the number her dad had given her, the phone had been dead. Krissy was on her own.

She'd spent the next few weeks trying to track him and his brother down. She made it all the way from Kansas to Missouri and up into Iowa until she was caught in a trap just over the state line, and she put up such a fight that she had to be tasered before they transported her to the Central Charge Center.

At least she's heard where they're keeping her dad. As soon as she sees a chance she's making a break for it. Get him out and get them both out of the country, that's Krissy's plan. And so what if they have tracking implants? She'll figure something out.

First step _run_ , second step _find dad_. He'll know how to fix their stupid tracking chips.

She looks at the purple ticket in her hand, lucky number 53, and then turns it over and goes still.

There's a symbol on the other side, hastily drawn, showing a broken collar. She looks around at the others in the room with her and sees her expression mirrored on their faces. Small amount of hope, mostly fear and resignation.

Theirs would not be the first slave revolt attempted, and everybody knows how those always turn out. She stands up a little straighter anyway. Those fuckers want a fight, she'll give them one. Make her dad proud.

First step _fight_ , second step _run_ , third step _find dad_.

She's gonna march out there and clobber the bitch who bought her "for a little light housekeeping and then, who knows, maybe once Jason is sixteen..."

Krissy's ready.

 

 

Maggie Stark sips at her champagne cocktail and watches the man in the corner. He's strange, the way he doesn't smile, the way his head tilts sometimes like he's listening to voices in his head give him orders.

But he is very fine looking, and just the kind of evening's entertainment she's looking for to piss off Don. She’s seething on the inside; just thinking of her husband makes her want to poke his wandering eyes out. A pleasure slave _and_ a mistress? Maggie's not going to take that lying down. But two can play Don's bedroom games.

She approaches the man, who’s watching the crowd from the shadows instead of mingling. He has dark hair that looks feathery-soft to the touch and wide lips that she’d like to nibble on. 

"So what's your name, handsome?" Maggie asks with a coy smile as she nibbles at the fruit in her drink.

He glances at her and then continues surveying the guests. "Cas."

"Well Cas, I was thinking maybe you'd like to accompany back to my hotel room for a night cap."

“It’s only 8:30,” he points out, eyes still sweeping the room. Then he looks at her again. “Have you been enjoying the canapés?”

“Um, no? What?” Maggie is nonplussed. She knows she looks scorching in her sky blue silk gown, and he’s barely acknowledging her presence. 

“This is not a good party,” he says as he looks to the stage, where the prisoner is being kept. “You should leave.” 

She snorts and turns away, beyond irritated. He should have been falling all over her. A couple more circuits of the room and he won't be able to resist her.

He was right about one thing, the crab puffs are delicious.

 

 

Dick is moving about the crowd, smiling and shaking hands. He notices that many people are avoiding looking at the stage, and he's okay with that. Not everybody is as strong as Dick after all, that's why his people need him.

"Susan," he says warmly as she steps up beside him. "I’m thinking of having my cellist accompany the public flogging, is he here?"

"Yes sir, he's with the other charges at the end of the hall."

"Be a dear and fetch him. He's been a little too friendly with Winchester; he should see this too."

She starts to step away and he adds, "Oh, and Susan? Make sure he knows that if he misses a note he's up next."

She nods again and weaves in and out of the people and tables to get to the slaves.

 

 

Sam’s arms have been numb for some time now. It’s taking every bit of his willpower to ground himself in now and not let his PTSD overwhelm him. He breathes steadily, deciding in the end that maybe it’s a blessing that he’s been blindfolded. If he concentrates really hard, he can almost imagine that the party is happening very far away, that nobody’s witnessing his humiliation.

He hates being on display like this, hates that he’s being used to lure Dean out of hiding. They had planned to crash the gala anyway, but Dean’s out there alone and Sam doesn’t know if any of their backup came through. Kevin hadn’t had time to explain anything to him, just let him know that Dean had contacted him and the plan was moving forward. Sam wishes he could tell Dean to cut and run. They’re never going to win, they were stupid to think they could.

 

 

Nothing is working out as Dick planned. Everywhere he turns it seems there’s another looming disaster, and he’s making a mental note of how thoroughly he’s going to discipline every last person involved in ruining his big night. The caterer had somehow served a dish that was possibly contaminated, if reports he’s been getting of people leaving with upset stomachs could be believed. Thirty minutes ago the corner of the room had been the source of some noxious, sulfurous smell that had more crowds of people hightailing it out the door. There’s also been a report of some kind of disturbance where the charges are being kept, and Dick ordered them to be brought out to watch the main event.

Nothing like a little public flaying to restore some order. If he orders Winchester to be lashed once for every infraction he committed in the past couple of weeks alone, it won’t be long before his skin is falling off in ribbons.

Dick steps up to the mic, prepared to give Dean one last chance to surrender, when there's a hideous squeal of feedback and the television monitors turn blue. Everyone hushes and turns to the front expecting a presentation and though Dick has no idea what's happening, he flashes his brightest smile at the crowd. A good leader always projects calm. 

The pieces are falling into place for him though. Too many strange coincidences and accidents have taken place tonight, and it’s becoming clear that he’s been sabotaged. 

“Susan!” he barks. “Get me the head of security, _now_!”

A quick glance out the window shows that whatever pirate feed is about to go live is probably showing up on every screen in the city, every television’s tuned to the 24-hour Corporate News Channel. 

The staticy blue screen dissolves into the image of his– _his!_ – IT wizard. She waves a little and flashes an embarrassed smile, and then another voice says something snappy off screen and she stands up straighter.

From his position seven blocks away Dean can distinctly hear Meg's voice in the background, bitching at Charlie to get on with it. 

“Oh, right,” Charlie says to someone off camera, her sheepish grin larger than life on the theater-sized screen. “Testing?"

Sam jerks in his chains as he hears Charlie’s voice. He can’t believe it’s actually happening, their plan’s been put in motion. And if it works….

"So, hi Chicago!" Charlie says. "Or I guess America? I’m Charlie Bradbury, today, and I've put together this very special presentation in honor of the man of the hour, Mr. Richard Roman!"

The crowd applauds but they look confused. The production quality is not exactly on par with Roman's usual broadcasts.

"Find her," Roman says to the head of Event Security. "She has to be nearby. Find her."

Jody Mills nods at him and turns briskly to give the other members of the security force instructions that will set them to chasing their tails.

The 10-foot tall projection of Charlie Bradbury continues."We all know and love the public Roman, but I think it's time we got to eavesdrop on some of his private moments."

The screen cuts to a slideshow of Richard Roman's greatest hits. Shaking hands with the president. Reading a picture book to grade-school students. Signing copies of his motivational book. Patting a dog. Cheering on the Bulls.

Then the audio kicks in.

 

ROMAN: Is there some sort of additive we can put in the charges’ diet supplements that will make them...a little more passive?

DR. GAINES: We're trying, sir, but it's tricky to manage without the productivity declining.

ROMAN: Well, you'll figure something out. Or else I'll have your firstborn! (Laughs)

DR. GAINES: Heh. Good one.

ROMAN: Get back to work.

. . .

ROMAN: You know, there's really only so many years a charge can be useful, depending on their particular talents. Then they revert back to leeches.

UNNAMED EXECUTIVE: (Laughs) What, you want some kind of equation to predict termination?

ROMAN: Exactly. It's all about efficiency.

. . .

UNNAMED SENATOR: That's going to take a lot of finessing Dick. I don't see how a bill like that could pass, to be honest.

ROMAN: I didn't get you elected for your honesty, Senator. I got you elected for your obedience.

UNNAMED SENATOR: Still, a clause that mandates all children born of slaves are slaves?

ROMAN: Charges.

UNNAMED SENATOR: Of course, I meant charges. Is that even financially viable? You're talking about the care and feeding of an army of brats.

ROMAN: Let me worry about that. We need some guarantee that the labor force won't be shrinking any time soon.

 

"Guards!" Dick bellows. He looks around the room but sees they're all holding their posts.

"Stand down!" calls the head of security. She nods to him and he thinks maybe he recognizes her as someone who turned up as a possible Winchester ally a few months back. Judy something, or Jodi. How the hell did she end up on this detail?

Infiltrated. He's been infiltrated.

She smiles at him and keeps her hand on the butt of her gun.

He's just about to damn them all and make a break for the exit when Dean Winchester himself storms in.

"Dick!" he shouts.

Dick narrows his eyes and watches the crowd part as Dean approaches the stage.

"You!" he shouts. "Filthy, bottom-feeding garbage! You’re just in time to watch your brother die!"

Dean never takes his eyes off Dick as he climbs onstage.

"Nobody has to get hurt," Dean says. "But I’m not leaving this building without my brother.

"You're kidding, right?"

Dean pulls out a gun and trains it on Dick.

"Not even a little."

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/armed-Dean5-resize_zps6296f86e.png.html)

 

Sam hears Charlie's audio loop start up, and he relaxes in his chains. One way or another it will all be over soon. When Dean enters the lobby, his shouts reverberate around the stone and glass interior. He sounds ready and able to end Dick.

Sam's pissed that there's nothing he can do to help, pissed that he's still on display in front of these vultures, pissed that he actually has to feel _grateful_ for being allowed to wear his jeans. He tugs at the chains again but a hand at his elbow stops him.

"This might work better," Kevin says, pulling off the blindfold and moving quickly to unlock the chains holding Sam's arms over his head.

Sam's arms fall heavy at his side, dead and useless, but he's free for the first time in days.

"Dean," he says, turning towards his brother but Kevin shakes his head.

"You need to help the other slaves. Come with me."

"But," Sam looks over his shoulder, catches his brother’s eye. Dean winks at him. 

"Garth's getting them all hyped up to revolt," Kevin says, dragging Sam down the hall. "But there's some that are too young or scared or whatever, and we want you to lead them out of the building. In case things get messy."

"I don't like messy," Sam says.

"Look, you don't have to tell me, I’m a pacifist,” Kevin says. “And a vegan. Or I was."

As they make their way down the hall they’re fighting a throng of purple collars, rushing out to join the chaos in the main lobby. 

"Who's ready to fight? Who's ready to win?" Sam hears Garth shout as he leads them into the melee. The slaves roar in approval.

"Was he a cheerleader?" Kevin whispers. Sam’s too exhausted and worried to contemplate such things.

“Later,” Sam mutters. 

Somehow Garth has outfitted his slave army with whiffle ball bats, of all things.

"Umm," Sam says, stopping to watch the slaves run past. A dark haired girl catches his eye and gives him a look that manages to be both caustic and empathetic, and he wonders if he knows her.

"I think it's okay," Kevin says. "The guards and cops working the party are supposed to be on our side. Nobody's going to get shot for smashing someone with a plastic bat. Hopefully."

When they enter the conference room where the remaining slaves are being held, Sam turns to Kevin.

"You can get these guys someplace safe, right?” Sam asks, surveying the group. They mostly look like parents with too much to lose if the revolt goes badly, along with a woman who’s about six months pregnant.

"Right," Kevin says, and then his brain catches up with his mouth. “Wait, me?" Kevin squeaks.

"Yes, you. Hurry up." Sam herds everybody down the hall towards the nearest emergency exit, explaining as he goes that if things are happening according to plan, the charge-tracking system is going to be permanently disabled within the next half hour.

"Good luck, Kevin. Thanks."

"Wait, Sam! Dean said you're to come with me."

"I'm sure he did."

Sam turns to back the way they just came from.

"But Dean said—"

"I know what Dean said, but you need to get these guys out of here. Get safe."

"Sam!" 

"I can't leave my brother out there alone!" Sam calls over his shoulder.

He runs down the corridor to find Dean, bare feet slapping on the cold ceramic floor. He's almost to the lobby's entrance when he suddenly finds himself flying backwards through the hall on an expanding wave of hot, pulsing air.

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/quote13_zps07ed7168.png.html)

 

Dean is still on stage holding Roman hostage when the slave entrance opens and a stream of shouting men and women in purple tunics spills onto the floor. Dean knew to expect this but he's still taken aback for just a moment, at the sudden shouting and smashing of plastic bats against tables and skulls, and that's all the time Roman needs. He spins around behind Dean and wrenches his arm up behind him, pulling his own gun out and holding it to Dean's temple.

"How'd you hide that thing in a tux?" Dean tries for bravado.

"Silence!" Roman yells above the fighting crowd. Security has stepped in finally but they're moving the party guests out into the humid streets instead of rounding up the slaves, and Roman rage is boundless. He brought order out of chaos in this stinking cesspool and _this_ is how he's repaid? 

"I said silence!" he bellows again.

"Don't think anybody's listening to you anymore, _Dick_ ," Dean says. "So why don't you just call it quits?

Roman snarls. "And let that bottom-feeder Crowley be in charge? Forget it!"

"Well, if it helps you any, he's next on my to-do list."

"Shut up, vermin," Roman hisses. He points his gun at the ceiling and fires off two rounds. Dean takes the opportunity to elbow him in the gut and roll out of the way.

The room goes still except for the sound of Roman's own voice on an endless loop.

_Is there some sort of additive we can put in the charges’ diet supplements that will make them...a little more passive?_

"Go ahead," Roman tells Dean. "Be the big damn hero. What, you think one rebel with a gun is enough to bring me down?”

"No, but two rebels might work," says a voice behind him as the unmistakable pressure of a gun barrel is pressed against his neck.

"Cas, man," Dean says. "It is _really_ good to see you."

And then the video feed changes again, goes live, and Charlie appears.

“There’s a virus that’s been running for hours, and it’s wiping the slate clean,” Charlie says. “We decided it was about time to take from the rich and give to the, you know, everybody.” She grins then, her smile luminescent, and Dean quirks a lip in appreciation. _You go girl_ , he thinks.

Dick snarls like a rabid dog, all public façade of goodwill and compassion shattered. "If you think I'm letting you destroy everything, tear up _my_ empire...”

"I don't want to shoot you," Dean says. "You might be more use to us alive anyway."

"You can't kill me," Roman says in a voice so cold it's almost inhuman. "I'm immortal."

"Dick, I am _not_ fucking around," Dean says through gritted teeth.

"Neither am I!" Dick brings his own gun up again and fires.

Dean ducks out of the way and Cas takes a shot, missing Dick's head but winging him in the shoulder. From his position on the floor Dean fires his own weapon, hitting Dick in the stomach. Dick collapses, looks down at the spreading red stain on his white tuxedo shirt.

"You little parasite," Dick hisses. "This is all on your head." He turns to see his beautiful celebration being torn up by the very riff-raff he'd been trying to keep off the streets all this time, and he's filled with repulsion.

"Susan!" Dick calls. He coughs up a bubble of blood. Dean steps towards him, to finish him or secure him Dick doesn't know.

It doesn't matter.

"Susan!"

"Here, sir." She materializes next to him and kneels at his side.

"End it!"

"Yes sir."

"What?" Dean asks, confused, as he watches Roman's assistant pull something out of her pocket and push the button.

Dean’s world turns upside down.

**Epilogue**

 

[](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/sylvia_locust/media/No%20Hell%20Below%20Us/quote14_zps6c5eb997.png.html)

 

It will be taco night, mid-winter, when Sam caves. He'll be washing up after dinner as usual—he never did learn to cook for shit so he's on permanent dish duty—and his wife will be sipping a cup of green tea while she watches him move about the kitchen.

"They're asking again," Sam will say as he focuses on the dishwasher. _Plate plate plate plate, pretty plates all in a row._ "I guess J.D's class is talking about the Second Era in social studies.”

"Yeah, I heard all about it at the park today."

"What do you think?" he asks.

"I think what I've always thought, babe,” she says as she swirls the dregs of her cup, the future in a handful of soggy leaves. “It's your story to tell. You'll know when to tell it."

Sam isn’t so sure. He doesn't know how to answer all the complicated questions his kids are bound to have. There are still people who think the rebellion ruined the fabric of society. People who hold clandesstine meetings to discuss the good ol’ days before the Redistribution, and make plans for bringing about the glory days once more.

Thankfully, it's not a very wise move politically to come out in support of the Second Era these days.

The kids have badgered him endlessly to tell the story of his family, of their history, and when his wife agrees with a sad shrug, he will finally tell them.

Not _everything_ , but enough.

It’s mid-winter, only three days after Dean's birthday, and Sam wonders if he'll ever stop waiting for Dean to show up on his birthday with a six pack in one hand and an apple pie in the other.

 _Only Dean_ , he thinks with a smile. _Only Dean would think beer and pie taste good together._

 

 

After tacos, and tooth brushing, and then _actual_ tooth brushing because Mary thinks she's the first kid in the world to only pretend to brush her teeth, they settle on the large bed Sam shares with his wife, one kid tucked under each arm.

"Once upon a time," Sam tells his children. 

"Da-aad," Mary says. "You said you'd tell us a truth. Only _fairy tales_ start that way."

She says fairy tales like she would say _stinky boys_ or _ba-bies_ , with so much derision Sam wants to laugh. 

"All good stories start that way," Sam scoffs. "Now will you let me tell _this_ story?"

They settle back down, burrowing into him, their small bodies tethering him to now, not letting him get too lost in his head.

"Once upon a time," he starts again, with a warning look to Mary, "the country was run by an evil ogre. Really, it was three evil ogres, who combined all their money and all their resources to rule the land. And they were called The Corporation."

"What are resources?" J.D. asks.

"That's a dumb name for an ogre," Mary says.

Sam agrees, and they settle against him again, and he continues. "But there were also good people, many good people, including a man named John who vowed to take down the evil giant."

Mary screws up her nose and wonders aloud if ogres are the same things as giants.

"It was a giant ogre, stupid," J.D. says. “Now shut up.”

"Anyway..." Sam cuts in, trying to head off the argument before it can really get going, "this man John gave his life helping save people from the evil giant. Or ogre. Or giant ogre."

"And this man had two sons!" J.D. says triumphantly.

"And this man had two sons," Sam agrees, trying to ignore the pinpricks at the corners of his eyes.

He draws the children closer, see the shadow of his wife in the hallway as she listens.

"And the oldest son was a hero, just like his father. And he spent his life riding around the country on a black mare named Baby, and he protected innocent people from the evil giant-ogre..."

 

_The End._


End file.
